Langston Holds Off Red Sox, 3-1

Normally, conceding a run with the bases loaded and no one out in the first inning wouldn’t be bad strategy.

For the Angels, who had been shut out by the Red Sox Friday and Saturday, conceding a run Sunday would have been close to conceding defeat.

“You have no choice but to buckle down in that situation,” Angel pitcher Mark Langston said.

Langston, who had walked the first three batters he faced, recovered his control and retired the side and the Angels went on to a 3-1 victory before 32,554 at Fenway Park.

Langston (4-1) took a shutout into the ninth inning but lost it when Tom Brunansky hit a home run to left field. Bryan Harvey came on to close out the game and prevent a Red Sox sweep, earning his 12th save.

“After that first inning, we didn’t expect to be going into the ninth inning in a shutout situation,” Angel Manager Buck Rodgers said. “Mark really did a heck of a job.”

The Angels had taken a 1-0 lead during the first on singles by Luis Polonia and Von Hayes against John Dopson (0-1) and Junior Felix’s double-play grounder.

Langston’s trouble began with full-count walks to Mike Greenwell and Jody Reed. He then walked Wade Boggs on four pitches, bringing up Jack Clark--a .273 career hitter against Langston.

“I made some good pitches to Greenwell and I thought I had him struck out, but I didn’t get it,” Langston said. “I didn’t make good pitches to the next two hitters, which got me in trouble.

“I wanted to get ahead on Jack Clark. Once I got him, I thought I might get out of the inning,” said Langston, whose strikeout of Clark was his first of four in the game.

Brunansky then popped to second, and rookie Bob Zupcic struck out.

“That was a huge inning,” said Alvin Davis, whose seventh-inning single scored Hayes with the Angels’ second run. “If he doesn’t get out of that, it’s going to be a very long day. They were looking at a big inning.”

Said Brunansky: “We lost this game in the first inning. We had him on the line and we failed to get a run. Even getting one run would have changed the whole game. He was kind of shaky, but he found his rhythm and he stuck it to us.”

While Langston found his rhythm, the Angels found ways to get to Dopson, who was making his first start since undergoing surgery on his pitching elbow in August of 1990.

Hayes led off the seventh with a double to left, took third on a grounder to first and scored on Davis’ single. After the Angels’ Rene Gonzales singled up the middle during the eighth, Danny Darwin came on to face Mike Fitzgerald, who sacrificed Gonzales to second. After Gary DiSarcina struck out, Polonia singled against left-hander Tom Bolton to make the score 3-0.

“We got a few things done today,” Rodgers said. “We got a sacrifice and Luis got a two-out base hit and we got enough done to get us a few runs in this ballpark, which we haven’t done in a couple of days.”

A few runs were all Langston needed for his fourth consecutive decision. “I think our pitching has been pretty solid recently,” he said.

“The first part of the season, the offense carried us. Now, the pitching is starting to come around and hopefully, it can pick up our offense.”